


It Started By The River

by MagicMage



Series: Short Stories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 02:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13626441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMage/pseuds/MagicMage
Summary: The son of the village chief is tasked with watching a young man who doesn't want to do his "job".





	It Started By The River

Argell wasn’t interested; that’s all I’d ever known about him.

He was about 4 years my senior and, consistently, he wasn’t interested. Our clan didn’t know what to do with him. My father, the head of the clan, didn’t know what to do with him. He had been offered every single job a man could do, from hunting to farming to fishing, and he had shown no interest in any of them. Worse, his methods of showing disinterest were to simply not do the job. He would wander off, or he would start bothering the women.

No one wanted to call him useless, but he wasn’t someone that anyone would call useful and he seemed to have no issue with it.

I had been tasked with watching him for the afternoon.

_It was ridiculous!_

A full-grown man needing to be baby-watched by the clan’s successor, who was _younger than him_. It was _ridiculous_. But, my father had warned me that we couldn’t just have him wandering about. A man alone was a man that the forest critters targeted as a meal and, no matter how useless he was, one less man in the clan was unacceptable.

We were sitting next to the river that ran next to the village. From here I could see the children’s playing pen, the women sitting outside their huts weaving or nursing or gossiping with the other women.

And then there was Argell.

He was sitting on a rock at the edge of the river with the most dejected look on his face, staring out into the water and playing idly with some thick grass reeds he’d pulled from the river’s edge.

What a _useless_ human being. We could have been out hunting or down river fishing. We could have been in the fields or doing repairs around the village. _I_ could have been in the clan’s main-hut learning how to run the clan, how to manage over two-hundred people and make nice (or not so nice) with the surrounding clans. Instead we were sitting on the river because _he_ couldn’t be left alone for too long or he’d go wandering.

I sighed, probably a bit too loudly and a bit too dramatically, then turned to stare into the swirling waters of the river.

“If you’re bored you could try weaving,” Argell told me blandly.

“Weaving is women’s work,” I replied.

It was bad enough that Argell, as a man, was weaving. It was even more ridiculous that Argell was suggesting that I, heir to the position of clan leader _and_ a man, should try weaving as well.

There was a moment of pause and I looked over to see that Argell was staring at the reeds in his hands, perhaps he was considering that what I had said was true. Then he glanced over at me blankly, before going back to playing with the reeds in his hands.

Truly it _was_ playing. No man had need to weave, just as the little girls who sometimes found their way into the fields had no need to farm. They played, as children did. Argell was simply a large, lazy, child.

Argell seemed content to keep to himself and continue _playing_ with his grass all afternoon so I was stuck there with him. Eventually one of the members of the clan council took pity on me and brought me some work to do to keep myself busy, numbers work, but it was something.

Eventually it was time for the evening meal.

The hunting party for the day had returned with several large deer and the women had turned some of it into stew. As the clan gathered in the large community hut, I turned to Argell and pointed to the serving pot at the centre of the room.

“You could try hunting again. The clan would not eat if not for the hunters,” I said, trying to inspire him into taking an interest in _something._ If anything would inspire someone, it would be the prospect of an empty belly.

“That’s not true,” he replied, his brows knitting thoughtfully. “The clan would not eat if not for the women who cooked the food.”

I pursed my lips at him for a moment, and then looked over to the serving pot where two of the women were standing and dishing out food to the children.

He had a point.

“Well I suppose that’s why we need every person in the clan, my father is always making a point of that.” I hadn’t expected Argell to posses that much critical thought.

We sat down at the head table, he was still sticking to me for some reason.

Argell turned to me and asked, “if there were no women, would you cook?”

I frowned at him. What a _strange_ and _impossible_ question. There would always be women. For every three male babies there were four females.

“Well, I suppose _someone_ would have to cook,” I said. He seemed content with that answer, and we ate the rest of our meal in silence.

Following our first day stuck together I was assigned to watch Argell for the next week. Lack of disposable man power, as well as a lack of volunteers to relieve me from my temporary post, resulted in my father asking me to watch him. I couldn’t very well say no, I felt it was my duty as the heir to try to solve the issue of Argell anyways.

Every day we ended up by the river, and every day he would pick up more pieces of grass to add to whatever it was he was making. It was odd, as the days went by I became more comfortable with the idea that he _was_ making something. I wasn’t sure what, I didn’t care enough to ask or look long enough to figure it out, but I knew it was something. He seemed intent on completing whatever it was.

Mostly we didn’t talk, but I was starting to realise that it was because he was shy instead of being boring or that he didn’t have anything to say. He often asked me odd questions, inquiring about things he shouldn’t care about like how many women worked in the weaving and sewing hut or what it was like being the son of the clan’s leader.

Sometimes he looked at me intently like there were words stuck in him that he couldn’t get out. I knew that feeling, I had felt it a few times at clan meetings where my father took charge and I was not permitted to contradict him even when I felt he was wrong.

Finally, at the end of the week, just before dinner he stood up from his rock. I looked up to find he was holding a creature in his hand. No, not a living creature, but a small, grass woven, long eared creature. I frowned at him as he came over to me and held it out.

“What?” I asked, trying to sound irritable even though I was most definitely curious.

“I’m sorry you got stuck with me all week,” he told me. “They’ll probably assign me someone else next week, but you’re the first one to talk to me so…here.”

I took the creature. The weaving, as far as I could tell, was exquisite. It was very small, and clearly very fragile because he had used no tools to make it.

“This is a rabbit,” I told him stupidly.

Obviously, he would know, he was the one who made it.

“Yeah. It’s uh…it’s not great, but if you’re careful with it you can use it to decorate your hut or something,” he said with a shrug.

Besides the fact that I didn’t really need small grass creatures decorating my hut, and besides the fact that I found it incredibly odd that I should be receiving anything from another man, I felt gratitude. I wanted to repay him, and suddenly I knew how.

I stood up as well, making sure to be careful with the grass-rabbit. “Come with me,” I instructed, looking him in the eye and then turning to walk to the weaving and sewing hut. He followed with an expression of concern. It was probably the biggest show of emotion that he had ever displayed.

I pushed open the door to the hut when we got there and held it open for him. He stepped inside, and I followed. I had never been inside the weaving and sewing hut before. There were at least twenty women, sitting around two rows of wooden tables and doing all sorts of things. Suddenly I was aware that the very clothes I was wearing had come from here, and it had never occurred to me before.

All eyes were on us, curious, as Argell was looking more and more concerned, though I could now see his eyes darting from project to project around the room. He was _interested_.

“Is Yolinda here?” I asked. I at least knew the name of the woman who managed the weaving and sewing hut, even if I didn’t know her face. It didn’t look like the hut needed much managing to me anyways.

An elder stood up from a complex basket weaving. “I am she,” she said as she approached. “What is it?” She sounded annoyed, though considering we were interrupting her work I wasn’t surprised.

I held up the small grass-rabbit, and the woman narrowed her eyes at me in question.

“Argell made this,” I told her.

“Lies,” she snapped, snatching up the grass-rabbit from my palm and inspecting it. For a moment I felt my gut twist with the thought that she would break it, but she held it delicately in hands that clearly knew how breakable grass-weaving could be.

“I have been supervising him all week and watching his progress with this project. Argell made this, you have my word,” I said.

“Boy,” she turned her attention from the grass-rabbit to Argell, “who taught you how to weave?” I couldn’t tell if she was accusing him of something or not, but Argell looked like a prey animal caught in the sights of a hunter.

“I…did,” he replied, looking timid and refusing to make eye contact with her.

“Yolinda,” I said to bring her attention back to me, “will you come with me to see my father?”

“Yes, I think I will,” Yolinda said, nodding and staring back down at the rabbit in her hand.

I allowed her to take the lead to the main-hut, staying behind with Argell to assure him that he was in no trouble and that hopefully this would in fact _solve_ the trouble that he had been causing. It was strange, but I felt that my father would accept my idea if only to ensure that Argell never had to be watched again.

We entered the hut and, to my surprise, Yolinda went straight to my father and, without any ceremony or apologies for interrupting whatever it was that had been going on before we got there, held up the grass-rabbit. “I want that boy with the girls in my weaving hut,” she said, pointing back at Argell.

My father was dumbstruck for a moment, simply looking at the grass-rabbit in her hand and then to myself and Argell in confusion. I had not expected Yolinda to be such a headstrong woman, she was old and frail looking.

“Father, if I may,” I said, stepping farther into the hut.

“Please do,” my father said, frowning at me. “I have no idea what’s going on here.”

“Argell is an unskilled, disinterested, and, frankly, lazy man,” I told him. I glanced back at Argell, concerned my bluntness may have hurt his pride, but he merely shrugged. “He is the one who created the weaving that Yolinda holds now. I believe, without a doubt, that his place in this village is in the weaving and sewing hut. I also believe, without a doubt, that if he is not placed there he will have to be assigned someone to watch him on a weekly basis, and that doing so will lessen the clan’s work force.”

My father huffed, and then turned around. I could tell he was rubbing his forehead, as if what I’d just said had given him a massive headache.

“If you don’t give him to me, I’ll take him,” Yolinda added. Only an elder could speak to the head of the clan like that and get away with it. I was momentarily glad that the woman who ran the weaving and sewing hut was so much older.

“And you believe that he will _finally_ get some work done?”

“Yes father, I do,” I replied, as my father turned back around.

He sighed, nodded momentarily, and then pointed at Argell. “From this day forward, Argell, you are assigned to the weaving and sewing hut. _Do not_ disappoint me.”

Argell beamed, and in that moment, I knew that as strange as a man doing a woman’s job was, I had made the right decision.

And that meant that I could get back to work as well.

**Author's Note:**

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